This was Vivienne Westwood’s first-ever show on the London menswear schedule, and a co-ed show to boot. But as she observed, it was far from the first time she’s put both genders on the same runway. She said: “My very first shows were all mixed. Really, they were. Pirates, Buffalo Girls. . . . men and women together. Although, in this show some of the men are wearing dresses, which isn’t something they did much of before.”

The guys-in-gowns moments included a long-haired model who wore his black one-shouldered tulle-twist dress above black ankle boots and check socks pulled taut above them. One wore a rib-knit sweater as a miniskirt below his powerfully shouldered jacket, another wore a workwear-indigo pinstriped shirt and skirt, and a third wore a full-length cream knit dress with a distressed hem and colored panels at the shoulder. “It helps you explore yourself, doesn’t it?” said Westwood.

Less transgressively, both men and women wore more of that broad-shouldered double-breasted tailoring with gender conventional attire below the belt. This silhouette, particularly when teamed with wide, not-quite-full-length pants and the zigzag pixie–meets–cowboy boots that shod many looks, provided a powerful reminder that while other hotly au courant designers have been working a similar seam recently, Westwood did this (like so many things) way before anyone. This tailoring sometimes came accessorized with phallic totems: jeweled or metallic balls (and the rest) on chains.